Radical changes in IT agendas over the last two years have created the need for a fresh wave of innovation in IT. And much of that innovation needs to focus on making the core infrastructure both more efficient and responsive.

That was the message to CIOs from Dr Joseph Reger, CTO of Fujitsu Technology Solutions at the annual Fujitsu VISIT conference in Munich in November 2009. Reger argued that IT decision makers and their technology partners must explore new technology approaches and alternative IT delivery models to respond to requirements for more cost-effective, efficient and flexible IT. And much of that effort should be focused on IT infrastructure, which currently accounts for 80% of all spending on IT, he said.

That new agenda, said Reger, was summed up in a recent report by consultancy group McKinsey: "It's time to raise the CIOs' game. They will have to make the IT function dramatically more productive, use IT more effectively and embrace disruptive technologies that will shape new economic terrain. The successful CIOs will be the ones who search for value through experimentation."

In Fujitsu's case, those technologies come in the form of Dynamic Infrastructures, an approach that provides customers with a range of IT service delivery model options, from on-premise hardware, software and solutions through to IT delivered as a fully managed service, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service, a private cloud option. With IaaS for Server, for example, customers get a single monthly bill based on actual use, with entry-level prices starting at 195 per month per server.

"I can't imagine how a CIO could do that without using the disciplines and portfolio of Dynamic Infrastructures," said Reger.

Reger's views on the need for innovation in a cost-critical environment were echoed to the audience of 6,000 delegates by Kai Flore, Fujitsu Technology Solutions' president and CEO, Benno Zollner, senior vice president, and Satoru Hayashi, executive vice chairman of the board. "The need for efficiency is one of [our clients'] highest priorities," Flore said. "And to create this, of course, they need business agility."

Collaborative creativity

These themes are high on the agenda of Peter Schneider, CTO at premium car and commercial vehicle maker Daimler. "The good thing with a crisis is that you can question long-standing procedures," he told delegates. "Our ability to optimise and innovate will ultimately decide if we survive or not."

Schneider outlined how his team has supported this by creating an online platform for collaborative working. Daimler's "Open Innovation Network" is an IT-enabled framework that allows its most creative thinkers, in more than 50 countries, to propose, refine, implement and share innovative solutions to key IT problems.

"Innovation doesn't happen in councils," he said. "It happens at the intersection between disciplines." Daimler's platform - which Schneider aims to roll out to the entire business and even externally, to permit contributions from suppliers and university research partners - adds value to the business by allowing this to happen regardless of users' geographical location.

Net Gen demands

That use of corporate social networking points to a wider trend - the consumerisation of IT - a topic picked up by John Schwarz, SAP executive board member and head of the company's BusinessObjects business intelligence division.

He highlighted the increasing need employees have come of age with Facebook and the iPhone," he said. "They want to have that kind of experience [at work] - not green screens or filling in forms on a computer."

Collaboration and interactivity are also crucial, he continued. "The same kids have learned to solve problems in teams. They want to have a community, and that may include people who are not in your enterprise. And they want to be able to experience a solution. They want animation, not just data on spreadsheets. They want to be able to model, to see, to visualise, to feel that data."

Rounding off the keynote speeches, Raejeanne Skillern, director of cloud marketing at Intel, discussed the tough choices required to get to a dynamic, cloud environment. "What and when to outsource, what to keep inside, which provider and partner [to choose], which software stack to use it's complex," she said. Her advice was as follows: "By beginning with known technologies, starting from the foundation of virtualisation, adding security features, looking for efficiencies in every move - that's what's going to enable you to seamlessly evolve your environment towards the cloud."

Watch the keynote speeches here.

Photography: Mirco Welsing